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On The Run
Fire. Crackling, scorching, blazing, burning fire. It swept across the planet's barren surface, springing into seas of brilliant orange wherever it took hold and ignited the air in firestorms louder than any ocean tempest. Ravaged by years of war, no plants were left in the piles of dust and shattered stone for the blaze to feed on, forcing even such a force of nature to struggle for survival. But where no living thing remained, the flames found ample fuel in bodies. Body-armored Marines lay heaped together in gruesome stacks with the patch-clothed farmers who'd taken up arms against them, skin and clothing blackened in the encroaching flames. Their corpses charred and crumbled away to ash, then swept off the remains in the wind to join a cloud of death choking everything yet to burn. The dead, at least, had some last fortune in no longer being able to feel the inferno's heat, but one man, still alive in the endless carnage, felt its ire assaulting his every sense and sapping the remaining life from his body as he fled for what little he had left. Acrid smoke and the stench of burning flesh stung his eyes and nose, while flaring tongues of the larger beast struck him with near-solid waves of heat down a course it dictated. Deafened by the crackling air, he blundered on without knowing to or from what he ran. The haze pressed in all around, its touch baking through his clothes and skin to roast him alive. Dying muscles, exhausted from his flight, sent last requests for air to his smoke-filled lungs in vain. But he pressed on, survival instincts demanding he find new ways of willing his oxygen-starved limbs over each new slab of broken permacrete in his way. It was a gallant struggle, but futile. Heat and smoke took their toll as he ran like a helpless rabbit, reacting without guidance to the fires in his way, driving himself deeper into the trap with every turn. At last, a thorn of twisted rebar hooked his jacket as he jumped from a permacrete slab, yanking him sideways in midair. His chest hit the ground squarely, winding him, and as he gasped for breath he could taste the planet’s red dust on his tongue. He wondered dimly if it had always been that color, or if generations of fighting had stained it that way. Out of strength and air, Gavin knew when he fell that he’d never get up again. Desperation willed him to cry out, but there wasn’t enough breath in his lungs to even try. It would have been pointless anyway, a bitter thought whispered to him. There was no one alive to hear him. Soon, he’d join the dead and crumble to dust, too. Waiting for the end, open one hazel eye dared open in hopes that someone would appear. It came a shock when someone actually did. Amid a clearing in the rubble just a few paces away, he could just make out a lean, stunted figure, cast in shadow as though the firelight was afraid to touch her. His vision resolving, Gavin’s eyes sprang open, stinging all the more as he realized he knew that outline. Baggy pants, hair tied back by a bandana . . . and a bumpy black vest strapped over her teal blouse. Something more than muscle forced Gavin’s deadened limbs to move. Pulling himself to his feet, he carefully limped towards the figure, not caring for the blaze closing around them. Escape or not, he was going to reach her. She was staring out over the wasteland, not seeming to notice Gavin as he came within a few feet. He lifted an arm to reach for her, when something caught his other hand and held him back. Glancing back, his breath caught as he found himself staring into the face of a man he’d left for dead. Clad head-to-toe in black armor, strapped with bandoleers and ammo bags, the edges of this new figure were blurred, wavering in the heat like some accursed mirage. Half its helmet was black as shadow, and the other painted in the dusk's bloody red light. A single, accusatory eye stared back at him from the sunlit side. An arsenal of blades and handguns hung from its belt, but the shade didn’t go for one to finish him off and held him anchored in place. Gavin’s fear vanished just as suddenly as the shade had appeared, replaced by a long-repressed anger swelling up hotter than the blaze pressing in around them. Clenching his free hand, Gavin prepared to bring his fist around for a punch, when he felt it close on something. Turning back, he was startled to find the girl standing in front of him. She met his gaze with hollow eyes, extinguishing his anger with the chill of horror running up his spine. Within his fist was her own tiny hand, both curled tight around the detonator. All Gavin had time to scream was, “''No!” 'Whunk.' “Ow!” ---- Gavin slid a hand up to his throbbing forehead and hissed, cutting himself off just short of a cuss. He opened one bleary eye between the fingers dragging down his face and grimaced up at the slanted ceiling just a foot above his bed. A dent had started forming after so many fitful nights. The dreams were back. And just when he thought he’d seen the last of them. Slumber spoiled by the nightmare, he slid into a fresh, cooler spot on the sheets and lazily surveyed his quarters aboard the ''Chancer V. Nestled in the very tail of the aging—no, make that aged—''Argo''-class freighter, the captain’s cabin was in its usual state of disarray with clothes, books, and an assortment of miscellaneous junk that only Gavin would’ve been able to identify set on or draped over every available surface. A wooden desk, bolted against the wall just a few feet away, was by far the worst offender. Stacks of old repair manuals and used paperbacks he’d left half-open rather than find a bookmark towered so high they almost obscured the sleek computer screen set into the wall behind them. Even its assigned chair was filled up, sitting skewed from the last time he’d used it. Above it was, ironically, a mostly-empty bookshelf, with a strap in place to tie down the few books still in their place should the artificial gravity fail. The back wall, opposite, was left completely empty. Its surface was steel, like every other wall, but its panels were articulated so the whole wall could roll up at the touch of a button to reveal an observation window. Normally, Gavin would leave it open, but when the Chancer was in slipspace as it was now, and the stars disappeared into the lightless void between spaces, he preferred it out of sight and out of mind. To top it all off was Gavin himself, lying where he’d collapsed atop his unmade bunk after his freighter had made the jump to slipspace. He had dark hair running just long enough to meet the layer of stubble in place around his jaw after one too many days gone without a shave. He’d been so exhausted from the day before, he hadn’t even bothered getting out of his spacer's jumpsuit before hitting the hay. Yesterday. He thought sourly. When the bounty hunter showed up, forcing Gavin to bail before he could pick up a decent cargo. No doubt about it, that was why he’d seen Mamore in his dreams. Gavin knew he’d be bound to cross paths with someone on his tail sooner or later; between the UNSC, the Syndicate, and even the Insurrection, it seemed like half the galaxy wanted a piece of him these days. But he hadn’t counted on the hunter being Stray. Simon, he corrected himself. Simon-G294, the Spartan who’d thrown in his lot with the Insurrection. Gavin still remembered the day the scrawny child soldier in patchwork clothes came into camp, led on by the girl in the turquoise blouse. Still remembered when the boy admitted he was a Spartan, how strange it had been to think the heroes of the Covie War were just kids like him. And now, five years later, he still had so much youth in his face. But it was only skin deep; anything resembling childhood innocence was long gone, torn out from under his skin by a galaxy forcing him to grow up fast. Stray still had the same tortured eyes as the Insurrection’s hardest soldiers, the same anger trapped inside. After Mamore, well . . . he had a lot to be angry about. Gavin considered himself lucky to get away. After all, if he hadn’t taken the precaution of landing precisely three hangars down at the spaceport from a warehouse filled with radiation-shielded cargo containers that nullified all thermal scanners, well, what was a man to do against a Spartan? But then, Gavin made his own luck like that, even if Spender, the old spacer who’d taught him the trade, always said luck runs out. He rolled over and sighed, trying to settle back in as he ignored the blaring alarms. Wait, alarms? “Oh, what now?” Gavin shouted, kicking free of his tangled bedsheet. He sprang off the bunk, scooping up a boot from the floor as electric beeping shrieked in his ears. The noise woke him up enough to cut through any remnants of sleep clouding his thoughts and let him analyze the alarm’s particular pitch. It was a smoke alarm—a basic system, but not a good thing. If a smoke detector was going off, it meant something in his ship was burning, and any internal sensor on whatever had the problem had already failed. Gavin was lucky the detector caught it. The problem could just as easily have simmered and given him no warning at all until his ship exploded. It still might, but now at least he had a chance to prevent it. Swiping his jacket from the back of the chair and a black baseball cap from its place on a hook, Gavin dashed out the cabin’s door, nearly tripping over a discarded shirt in the process. Stepping out into the hallway, he could instantly smell it. Smoke, but nothing like the cloud of death from his dream. It was machine smoke, oily and thick, but bearable after the memory of burning flesh. Shrugging on the worn leather sleeves of the brown jacket, he pelted down the corridor between the ship’s passenger cabins, trusting his nose for a guide. Halfway down the passage he reached an intersection and skidded to a halt, grabbing the corner of the wall to stop his sprint. A quick glance down one of the side corridors told him at once; wispy, blue-gray tendrils had started climbing the stairs on either side. Using his grip on the wall to pull himself in the new direction, he hurried below, coming out under the high ceiling of the Chancer’s cargo bay. The room was large enough that Gavin probably could have fit a UNSC tank or two in the lane between the stairwells, not that he’d ever be keen on trying. But at the time, the bay was empty, clear back to the hydraulic door that functioned as a fold-down cargo ramp. Another day, Gavin might have wasted some time lamenting his lack of work, but right now, the smoke billowing out of a door in the bulkhead separating the bay from the engine room fore of it had his attention. Vaulting the railing, he landed hard and sprinted to the door over the protest of his calves. The moment he crossed the threshold, haze pressing tightly between the engine room’s walls had Gavin hacking and coughing as his body reacted violently to the fumes his lungs drew in with every breath. Crossing the room, he kicked over a toolbox that had been carelessly left out, spilling wrenches and pressure meters underfoot. Gavin stumbled, but made it to the life support controls and typed in a command to speed up air recycling filters all over the ship. It gave him a jump on clearing out the smoke, but didn't solve the problem. For that, he had to look around for the source. At first, it was hard to even make out the bulky shapes of generators and recycling tanks. The haze swirled in lazy clouds as status lights on the machines created a dazzling light show. Then a strong, consistent flicker of orange at the back of the room caught his eye. He grabbed a compact fire extinguisher from its bracket on the door and did his best to charge, dashing around the massive obstacle of his slipspace drive and squeezing between it and the ship's powerplant. Then, he finally laid eyes on the fire itself. It seemed so out of place for an instant that Gavin came to a stop, trying to make sense of the column of flame rising absurdly high for not having a scrap of potential fuel at its base. It seemed to just spring from a tiny circle on the metal floor, not a flicker spreading outside. Then he spotted the iridescent film on the deck beneath it, and took aim with the extinguisher at the little pool of oil. He squeezed its handle tightly, and was rewarded with nothing more than a dry squelching sound. “Are you kidding me?” Gavin railed at the extinguisher, suddenly regretting buying the safety equipment at a discount. He threw the useless can aside and looked around frantically for anything else to use. There was a spigot on the water recycling tank, but he didn’t waste a thought on it. Water and burning oil were a bad combination. His wandering gaze halted when he spied a cleaning rag lying among the tools he’d kicked onto the floor. Without hesitation, he threw himself over the slipspace drive and made a grab for the cloth, dinging his knuckles on a heavy torque wrench and knocking his wind out as he landed on his chest. Before he even tried to get up, he reached out for the recycling tank’s spigot and twisted open the valve. Water splashed out onto the floor and Gavin thrust the rag into its torrent, holding it there until he was sure every corner was soaked. Waiting on it as the fire still crackled in his ears was a test of his every nerve, but the rag would just be more fuel for the fire if he threw it in half-dry. It did, however, let him get some of his breath back in the less-dense smoke near the floor. But by the time he was ready, he was sure adrenaline flowed thicker in his veins than oxygen. Climbing to his feet, Gavin felt his head swim and had to put a hand on the slipspace drive’s edge for balance. Using its edge as a guide, he staggered back like a spacer the night of payday through the oily smoke, dripping rag held over his mouth and nose to filter his breath. Straining to see through his stinging eyes, Gavin used the fires radiating heat to tell him when he was close enough. Then, squeezing his eyes shut for one last second of relief, he sprang them wide open and took his shot. The drenched rag landed squarely on the oil stain and hissed. Gavin ground it under his boot a few times until the last of the blaze fizzled and snuffed out. He breathed a sigh of relief, then fell into another fit of coughing when he inhaled. The air filters were starting to thin out the smoke, but Gavin pulled off his cap and swatted it through the air to help them along. Returning to the water tank to shut off the spigot, he waited a minute or two until the air was breathable again, then doubled back to the scene of the fire. Taking a knee, a quick touch of the rag told him the oil was still hot, even if it wasn't combusting anymore. He drew his hand back, when a tiny, black droplet burst on its back. Looking up, Gavin spotted a pipe running along the wall directly above it, and a few drops of dark condensation on its underside. He twisted to get a closer look, and found the problem: a bullet was lodged in the pipe’s side. The pointed shred of metal was wedged tightly, plugging the hole it had made, but a hairline crack threaded out along the pipe in either direction and let oil slowly drip through. Right underneath the leak was a shorn wire, probably meant to connect the oil pressure gauge to the alarm which had failed to go off. A few drops of dark liquid stained its end. There must've been his ignition source. He knew where the bullet came from the moment he recognized it. Gavin's escape in New Tyne had been so close, Stray had fired an assault rifle after the retreating freighter. A couple armor-piercing rounds had broken the ship's skin, and while he'd patched the holes before leaving atmosphere, it seemed this one had ricocheted around enough to cause him some trouble. Gavin made a mental note to see about buying back the belly armor plate he’d sold for scrap last trip. The fuel he’d save in the tradeoff just didn’t seem worth it anymore. He should’ve broken out his welder and patched up the pipe, but instead, he only shut off a valve feeding into it, and covered the wire's loose ends with a bit of electrical tape. He'd fix it later. For now, all he could do was slump against the wall and slide down to a seat on the floor. Blue-black streaks lay under Gavin's tired eyes, his head was dizzy and aching, he smelled like engine smoke, and his sleeves and pant legs were soaked from the thin layer of water sluicing over the deck towards random strong points in the artificial gravity units underneath. Tired didn't begin to cover it. He wasn’t worried about the water. Dehumidifiers in the water-recycling system would catch it once it evaporated just as the air-recycling filters made the smoke recede towards the ceiling as it thinned out. At last, the detectors, satisfied by the smoke-to-breathable-air ratio, shut off, leaving nothing but the hum of the Chancer’s engines behind. Without them, Gavin found the silence deafening. There had been a time when silence was unheard of on his ship. When his crew would constantly get in each other’s’ ways as they went about routine checks to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen. Now, he missed the heavy tromp of Cail’s boots on the deck, missed Allana’s hauntingly beautiful hum floating down from the common rooms, even missed the noisy wheeze of Bupup’s methane breathing apparatus. More than that, he missed them. But he put those feelings aside. The old crew splintered after going one circle of hell too deep on a job. Wasn’t anyone’s fault, Gavin needed to remind himself, for picking up the job from the Syndicate. By its end, they were a crew who just couldn’t trust each other anymore, and what went down would’ve been bound to happen anyway. The job had been nothing more than the occasion. Now, Bupup was dead, Allana was dead, and Cail . . . well, wherever he was, Gavin wished him better luck than he was having at the moment. Gathering his strength, Gavin picked himself up and headed for the freighter’s cab, unbolting a door on the wall opposite the one where he’d entered. On its other side was the galley, brightly-lit and of all places strangely clean compared to the rest of the ship, if only because there wasn’t anyone else to clean up after. He scooted around a table and set of stools, all bolted to the floor, and stepped through the open hatch to the cabin. He couldn’t help a small smile as his boots cleared the door's rim. Under the sloping ceiling of the Chancer’s nose, the cab felt cozy and dark, bathed in softly glowing readouts and multicolored buttons with just enough indirect light coming in from the door to see by. Stepping out of its anti-shadow, he pressed against the padded back wall and slid behind the consoles, into the well-used pilot's seat and sighed in contentment. After running the length of his ship, there was no place he'd rather end up. From the captain’s chair, the whole of the universe made sense to Gavin. The scale of a million stars, each with their own system of planets and moons, and each one of those a world unto itself, seemed much more manageable fitted into the view of the wide porthole wrapped around the front of his ship. Whatever lay in his path, the Chancer gave him the choice to fight or run from it as he pleased, though he found these days that he was doing a hell of a lot of the latter. And running was getting old. Settling back, he gazed out into the incomprehensible dark space of slipstream and found himself longing for the jump to end. He wanted to lay eyes on a speckled starscape again. Stars, he knew, hurtled through space at impossible speeds, but to something as small as a human being, they never seemed to move at all. Ages ago, sailors among his Earth-bound ancestors had charted their courses by the constant patterns in the sky. Gavin wondered what it’d be like to be so permanent, unaffected by petty human concerns, all the way from the ambitions of the masters of the UNSC and Syndicate all the way down to his own day-to-day struggles: where to get his next cargo, how much they would pay, and would it be enough to feed him for the weeks a slipspace jump would take. He wouldn’t at all mind not having to worry about it. Realizing the silence was affecting his mood, Gavin slipped his left hand into the darkness beside his chair and pulled up a plain acoustic guitar from where it was usually propped up to wait for him. The instrument was cheap, made of laminate wood in some Inner Colonial factory that churned them out by the hundreds, but it was like an old friend to him. Every one he'd owned, and he'd owned many, had its own history and memories associated with it. This one had been with him through countless bars across the colonies, a veteran of late nights playing for tips just to pick up a few extra credits, and many a lonely moment in slipspace like this. The feel of its strings, the vocal cords of its long neck, were familiar to his fingertips as he brought it into his lap. Even an identical one from the same factory would've had a different feel to it. Thinking back through the many tunes he'd picked up or invented himself, Gavin coaxed the notes out of memory and the taut strings of the guitar, and filled the void in his silent ship with soft-strummed notes and a voice that had to sound cheery to sing it right. :''Engines burn bright in the evening sky, :''Horizon’s last fading light beckons me. :''Turn of the world below goes by :''As breaking its orbit, I set to sea. :''Brightest of stars in the darkest of space :''Connected outline a path for me to trace :''Though the vacuum between tears my breath away, :''True to this course, I swear I will stay. :''Slip between spaces, through oceans of night :''Dark currents carry me faster than light. :''Though I have to trust that I’ll find my way :''I can’t help this feeling I’m slipping away. :''I’ve shaken the hands of the broken and whole, :''Met millions of eyes and seen through to their souls. :''But what, when they look up and back at me :''Reflects in their eyes, I can’t say that I see. :''For I’m only a spacer about to take flight, :''Wandering aimlessly into the night. :''Behind, let them say of me what they will say :''I’ll be sailing starside and slipping away. 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